n a t b s

Recently, juries in Illinois and D.C. acquitted two people of crimes they clearly committed: a marijuana offence and a firearms possession offense respectively.  How did they do this?  Through the magic of Jury Nullification of course.

Jury nullification is a power that juries have to ignore, or nullify the law.  Basically, if they think a law is unjust, all they have to do is acquit the defendant.  Doesn’t matter if they’re clearly guilty, once they’ve been acquitted they cannot be retried thanks to the double jeopardy clause in the fifth amendment.  It’s really that simple. It gives power to the people to not enforce unjust laws.  The only problem, is that not many people know about this and judges certainly don’t tell them.  One does wonder why more defense attorneys don’t take this approach though.

Imagine what would happen to the war on drugs if juries started acquitting non-violent offenders en masse.  We would effectively kill it without ever passing a law.  I personally vow that if I’m ever on a jury in a non-violent drug case I will vote to acquit.  If you know anybody with jury duty, tell them about this.  Only ignorance is keeping us down.

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